Here you will find the deepest Minor League Baseball Rankings that you will find anywhere. Also a top 300 for the MLB Draft. If you are looking for that next tier in your Dynasty Fantasy League. Look here first.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

This year, I'm doing this a little differently. From here forward, I will only be looking at players I drafted and international players I signed, eliminating existing Astros. I want this to be my team, not take credit for the great job that Jeff Luhnow and company have done in Houston liquidating MLB talent for prospects. To simplify the 2010 and 2011 drafts in which I intended to break the bank and sign all the players, I will only carry forward my picks in rounds 1-10 and the players that actually signed. This is more realistic than signing all the players. I did that to show how quickly a large investment at the amateur acquisition level could turn a team around. I will post a follow up about that in a year or two, using the logic I used when I did the drafts but for now, this is my shadow system.

This is my way of showing who I identified and thought were more valuable than others, while not losing out on all the talent I identified. This way, I can re-draft talent that I like that I previously drafted. I'm losing out on potential 1st round picks like Jonathon Crawford, Nick Burdi and others over the next two years but I can take them again if I'd like. I didn't like them enough to spend a high pick on them, so I can't claim I knew better than the rest in that way.

I also decided to look at my 2008 and 2009 rankings and while I didn't do a shadow draft for them, I went through the rankings I did and took the top player available at each Astros pick for those two seasons. I will add them to the system as well to help fill the rosters in and speed up the process by two years. I think I have improved considerably at talent evaluation since then but I still grabbed a few excellent picks, mostly because the teams that drafted them paid overslot when that was still a thing. I'm happy with the way the system shakes out and now I can start thinking about who I want to add this year.

Friday, April 19, 2013

The amount of value currently being placed on unproven minor league talent calls for the identification of key attributes that lead to a player reaching the major leagues. This is a commodity that should be heavily invested in. Originally, I did research on the MLB Draft, analyzing college, high school and junior college picks in each round to see what percentage of each made it to the majors. I added the additional variable of position but the results were too variable and not personal enough.

The next step was analyzing performance. I did not use advanced metrics, only the standard counting stats for this process because of the variation in any subjective statistics and scouting at the minor league level. I analyzed many years of data to find the correlation between minor league performance and reaching the major leagues.

I created a weighted point system to represent these numbers for an overall score to track in-season progress but the core of my system comes from full season analysis. Taking players and breaking them into groups of other players with similar results is the first step. The second step is just breaking the groups down one more step based on age, level and results. The third step is more granular and unique to the player. In the end, each player fits into three groups of varying sizes from very unique to very broad depending on how they performed and player comparisons available.

Once these groups were formed, I used the MLB data of the players that made it to the majors and assigned it to each group. This is a simple prediction of how similar minor leaguers performed in the majors and the chance that they even make it. These data sets are applied to each player and regressed based on the success of similar players.

The projections I have created are safe projections, regressed more toward the mean and it isn't rare for the best players to out produce them when I have studied past results. To counteract this deficiency, I created ceiling and floor projections as well, pointing out the potential for a player who could be a star and those that have red flags. Ideally, I need three years of data to run this projection but it's not necessary. It can be done with as little as 50 plate appearances.

This system has a lot to be done to it before it is finished but the structure is sound. I have concentrated on hitters but have a strong system for pitchers started as well it's just not as advanced. Because all of the talent in MLB comes from the minor leagues and one person can't see everyone, this could be a great tool to integrate with a scouting department and developmental staff to identify impact talent. For now, it will be used by anyone reading my blog or Minor League Ball.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

This years' international signing period will have slots. Sorting them with the MLB Draft, we can see where these players would slot in the MLB Draft, according to MLB. The Astros would get 1st (between 7th and 8th overall), 4th, 5th and 6th round picks while the Nationals would get 4th, 5th, 6th and 10th round picks.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Last summer, I bought a new Mac and didn’t have any games on
it. I was browsing through the app store and saw OOTP. I had never played OOTP
before. I had purchased iOOTP for two years and loved it. I played it often on
my phone at night or during breaks during the day. It was quick and easily
accessible to pretend to be a GM and build up a dynasty. The depth of the game
was as good or better than any other baseball game on the market. When I saw
the game in the app store, I couldn’t pass on it. If the portable version was
good, this has to be great…and so it began.

I played it a lot. Sometimes a couple hours would pass and I
wouldn’t even realize it. That is what a game should do, in my opinion. It
isn’t MLB The Show. It doesn’t look like a real baseball game or even try to
attempt that. While I love the aesthetics of that polished console game, it fails on so many levels that I find many part of the game unplayable. Yes, I am a baseball snob and I am proud of that. What OOTP 14 does is replicate how baseball works better than any
other game I have ever seen. OOTP 13 was a great game but lacked in amateur player acquisition. I worked on custom rosters but I got sidetracked. So I waited for the new version, one in which I hoped would have the updates I wanted.

For the couple months, I’ve been waiting for a new version
to come out and I was excited when I saw the pre-release information that said it improved the parts of the game I wanted improved. Yes! I was
lucky enough to get a version of the game before the pre-order release date so
I could play it for a few days before I wrote my review.

This year, they used PECOTA for player ratings so the
accuracy is as good as it gets.

The minor leagues have all your favorite prospects, and the ones who are just organizational guys. You need them too in this game. You don’t want the AA team to suck. It will hurt the other guys’ morale. There are real players for the 2013 draft in the game…and
the ratings are pretty accurate. I don’t know who did the labor on this but it
is an impressive feat. Congrats to the development team for making a picky guy
like me happy. Thanks as well.

At this point, I’m only one season in. I started a game as
the GM of the Minnesota Twins. After playing the first season, the Owner
thought we should play .500 ball (delusional) so I gave up on that by the 40th
game or so and started selling off. I was pleased to find that I had to give up
quality to get quality. By moving any veteran that I could get something for, I
ended up getting a few decent prospects. The game is very realistic. You can't trade scrubs for good prospects, though once a team is in win now mode, it is easier to pry them away. IF you want an easier go of it, you can tweak settings or even play in
commissioner mode. You want to punish the Marlins? Want to make that contract for A-Rod a couple years longer to hurt the Yankees? You can do it in this game.

Back to my season.

I checked the waiver wire often and picked up Jimmy Rollins
and Roy Oswalt. I was hoping to flip them. Well that didn’t happen. So, J-Roll
is the Twins 2014 short stop and Oswalt will be in the rotation…see being a GM
isn’t that easy.

I went through the draft. Some of it was really accurate,
some of it wasn’t but it’s hard to replicate something so unpredictable. Mark Appel lasted to the second round. The
great part is that most of the ratings are representative of the real player.
That is crazy. Eugene Vazquez wanted $2.6 million to sign, so did Justin
Williams. They are good players but damn, that’s crazy. The thing is, they
might actually have expectations like that. They are both talented, so in a
simulation, this is believable. In the end, I paid them. Save at the big league
level, spend on the draft. It was fun. The list of available players is huge and
I recognized the vast majority of the names. I’m not sure if some were computer
generated or not, the big names are there, so you can actually draft Jonathan Gray or Clint Frazier. So much fun.

I got skunked in the international free agency though. The
top players kept running up the amount they wanted. By the time I realized I
wasn’t landing a big fish, the little ones were gone. I only got a couple low
level guys. That hurt.

Well, I will see how I can improve next year. I’ll try to
move Rollins, wait for my youth to develop and hope Sano doesn’t miss almost an
entire season with a leg injury. Yes, the game is very realistic and can crush
dreams just like the real game.

The game is phenomenal. The depth is amazing. There are reports
on everything you could want. It is like having a full staff reporting to you. If I were a real GM, I would want many of the things in this game available to me.

I can’t recommend this game more than I do. It is the best
baseball game on the market. Hands down. Go buy it right now. You will be happy
you did. Check out their facebook page for information, screenshots and to read what others are saying. I'm not the only one loves it. Don't miss out.